As Shutdown Loomed, Woodbury PD Ensured Officers' Licenses Were Up To Date

During his petition for additional funding on Tuesday afternoon, League of Minnesota Cities attorney Tom Grundhoefer presented arguments to suggest shutdown-related limitations on Minnesota police departments are putting public safety at risk.

According to Grundhoefer, shutting down Minnesota’s Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) licensing board has made it impossible to recruit, hire or train new public safety officers. In cases where officers move on from a police department, it is impossible to replace them with a government in place.

“The hiring process (for police officers) is lengthy,” Hutchinson Police Chief Daniel Hatten said. “Once we reach the point where an officer can be hired and training can begin, we still have three to four months before that officer can become a functioning member of the public safety department. Every day we kick the can down the road prolongs this scenario.”

In Woodbury, the scenario isn’t as dire, according to Public Safety Chief Lee Vague. The is at capacity and isn’t looking to make any new hires, he said.

However, the POST licensing board being down could have presented some issues for officers’ whose licenses were set to lapse, Vague said.

“That could be a problem,” he said.

With the looming a few weeks ago, the department made sure officers’ licenses were renewed and there were no police “in the gap,” Vague said.

Databases

During Tuesday’s testimony in front of Special Master Kathleen Blatz—who is hearing petitions from organizations seeking funding after being deemed “non-core, non-essential” prior to the —some said there are also problems with vehicle license databases are not being updated.

The databases that help officers determine the category and number of vehicle-related offenses since the government shutdown are erroneous at best and incomplete at worst, said Minneapolis-based attorney Kurt Glaser.

“Police officers may start to err on the side of not taking offenders into custody because drivers know they’ll get a pass,” he said.

David Lillehaug, special counsel for Gov. Mark Dayton, echoed the sentiments of most people in the room, “This sounds like a serious problem. It needs to be dealt with immediately. We request the right to come back to this issue as early as tomorrow.”

But in Woodbury, Chief Vague said officers here always assume there is some lag time between an offense and when it’s registered on the state database.

“We never count on the info being that up to date,” he said.